


if the sun should follow us into your room

by tinypi



Category: The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Series
Genre: M/M, combination of missing scene and post movie scene, could probably count as hurt/comfort, or maybe just my specific brand of soft/dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:41:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26145793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinypi/pseuds/tinypi
Summary: With some horror Jonathan realized that he’d invited a mysterious desert warrior up to his hotel room on a whim, with very little idea what to talk about.
Relationships: Ardeth Bay/Jonathan Carnahan
Comments: 21
Kudos: 151





	if the sun should follow us into your room

**Author's Note:**

> As often, thanks to Ben for the beta and emotional support. I did promise them I'd point out that i made them leave in all the odd Brit-American spelling, cause that's just how i do, so. Point.
> 
> Title blatantly stolen from the Raconteurs song "Yellow Sun", cause I listened to it a lot while writing this fic.

“You alright?” O’Connell whirled around from the exploded little scarab to where Jonathan was halfway to hiding behind Ardeth, arm cradled to his chest. “Let me see.”

Jonathan stumbled a little when O’Connell grabbed his arm and pulled it forward to take a look, hissing through his teeth as he turned it this way and that. It was always curious to be on the receiving end of what he now recognized as O’Connell’s particular brand of affection: a lot of manhandling and being pulled along by no-nonsense grabbing, which was strong but never bruising. Really, Jonathan might have been touched by it all, if he wasn’t quite so busy fighting the urge to rip the skin clean off his own arm. 

“Yeah, that’ll scar,” O’Connell said, strengthening his hold when Jonathan’s knees wobbled below him as Ardeth steadied him on his other side.

“The one where you carved into my shoulder with a flick knife? Or the other one?” Jonathan said, slowly regaining the strength in his legs and not too ashamed to lean on Ardeth as he did so.

“You’re welcome,” O’Connell replied drily. 

“I think it is fair to say they know we’re here,” Ardeth said, stepping into the conversation before it had any hopes of developing into an argument. He nodded at O’Connell, who was looking between Jonathan’s openly bleeding arm and their hastily abandoned effort at uncovering the way towards the statue of Horus. “Hand me your knife.”

O’Connell, seemingly having learned not to question Ardeth, handed it over without comment and watched as he began to cut up the hem of his robes.

"No offense, and I do appreciate the effort, but are those anywhere near clean? When was the last time you washed them?" Jonathan asked as O’Connell turned back to heave some stones around, manly grunting and all.

"A Medjai's robes are cleaned by the beating sun, the biting wind, and the coarse sands of the desert. Washing them in the manner you suggest is most sacrilegious."

"What, really?"

"No.” Ardeth grinned and tugged what was left of Jonathan’s shirt off his shoulder, assessing the cut and his strips of cloth. He laid one hand on the very exposed skin right where Jonathan’s shoulder met his neck and, while Jonathan was still busy having all sorts of feelings about that, pressed a wadded-up little bundle of cloth to the weeping cut without warning. 

“Hold this,” he said, kindly ignoring how Jonathan tried to flinch away from him and had ultimately not even managed to budge from the steadying hand on his shoulder.

Jonathan, having really nothing better to do at that moment, held it.

Ardeth quickly secured the bandage in place with a makeshift sling that went under the bad arm and over the good one, before trying to coax Jonathan’s twitching arm into stretching out in front of him, which was a much harder task than it should be. While Jonathan knew that the bug had been cut out, it seemed his arm hadn’t caught up to that fact yet.

“This would really be a lot easier if you just held still.”

“Sorry,” Jonathan said, barely managing to avoid slapping Ardeth in the face where he was bent over his arm. “I promise I’m not doing this on purpose.” 

In one swift movement, Ardeth dug his thumbs into the pulse points on Jonathan’s wrist and inner elbow, then lessened the pressure and began gently massaging the spots. Whatever noise Jonathan let out, despite his best efforts, was apparently loud and interesting enough to have O’Connell look over, eyebrows raised.

“Better?” Ardeth asked quietly, Jonathan’s arms still cradled in his hands.

“Yes, much,” Jonathan managed, “uh. Thanks.”

Ardeth had him hold down a wad of former robe once more. Between him gently wrapping his own clothing around Jonathan’s forearm and O’Connell grunting in the background, Jonathan was about ready to- “You know, this almost reminds me of boxing at college.”

“Does it?” Ardeth asked, finishing the bandage with a neat little knot. He laid his forehead over the wrapping, nose to Jonathan’s wrist, mouth almost, _almost_ kissing his palm, and said something low in Arabic that Jonathan didn’t quite manage to catch.

“You and I learned boxing very differently,” O’Connell snorted, American as ever, and cut off any potential reply with a cry of triumph as he broke through the wall.  
  


\-----  
  


Jonathan woke to a warm hotel room and his arm twitching uncontrollably by his side.

He muffled a little scream of despair in the pillow and sat up to grab at the offending limb, trying to contain the bigger spasms with his unaffected arm before the wild movement could dislodge the bandaging or, somewhat more worrisome, open up any wounds. 

There was nothing to be done about it but ride it out and hope it wouldn’t be a repeat of last night’s full hour of pleading with his own arm to settle down.

He contemplated what to do. Reading didn’t work, but maybe he could pace about to tire himself out? Drink? Drink and pace, to complete the image of a man driven mad in his own room, by his own self? It certainly seemed suitably dramatic.

Through some fairly elaborate contortion that involved sticking his arm under his leg, which Jonathan up to that point hadn’t been entirely sure he could even still manage, he lit a lamp and filled a glass without spilling anything. Motivated by this accomplishment, he emptied the glass in one go and poured another one to take with him on his pacing about. 

In a fit of genius, he trapped the twitching arm inside his shirt, which most certainly looked very odd, but did the job of constraining it enough so he had the other one free.

Pacing, as it turned out, was very boring.

“Ow!” And dangerous.

He manfully resisted the urge to jump around on the foot that did not have a stubbed toe lest he become a one-armed, one-legged fool surely doomed to tip over and break his neck and paced onwards onto the balcony, where the cool air would hopefully settle his smarting toe.

“Oh,” he said when he realized that the spasms had stopped just as he saw a familiar set of robes passing by on the street below. He popped his arm back into its sleeve and turned to take a closer look.

“Hey,” Jonathan whisper-shouted at the figure, drink in his hand sloshing about before he could set it on the table in his haste to lean further over the balcony railing. “Ardeth?”

The man, who surprisingly was indeed Ardeth, stopped and looked up, returning Jonathan’s sloppy wave with a smile.

“What brings you here, old friend?” Jonathan asked, pushing himself forwards a little more to revel in the sight of such a safe face.

“Please don’t fall.” Ardeth hurriedly stepped towards the building, arms raised as if to catch him. “I wouldn't know how to explain it.”

Jonathan waved him off, then thought better of it when his toes briefly left the ground. “Hey, come here. Come up.” Ardeth smiled and inclined his head in a nod. “Come to the hotel entrance, I’ll-” 

He stopped. Ardeth, clearly a man of action, had found hand- and footholds on the side of the building and was steadily climbing up to Jonathan’s room. Jonathan suddenly felt rather Shakespearean, for all that he’d only ever liked the comedies.

“-meet you there. Right,” he said, desperately trying to cover for the full body blush that had taken over his features by the time Ardeth swung himself across the railing. “Grab a seat.”

“Thank you.” Ardeth gracefully sunk into one of the two chairs around the little balcony table. Jonathan wondered what could be done to shake the man’s composure, but if even undead mummies were no match for Ardeth Bay’s grace, it seemed there was little he could do all by himself.

“I assume you won’t want any of this?” Jonathan shook his bottle of whiskey at Ardeth before refilling his glass.

“You are right to assume so.”

Ardeth settled into silence, apparently happy to watch Jonathan drink and make sure he wouldn’t topple over the balcony. With some horror Jonathan realized that he’d invited a mysterious desert warrior up to his hotel room on a whim, with very little idea what to talk about. He knew from an hour of sewer wandering experience that Ardeth was open to conversation, if prompted, but god, what should he even ask?

“There are several affairs to take care of,” Ardeth began suddenly, startling Jonathan out of his looping thoughts. “We lost many men. The other tribes need to be informed, so we may plan for the future ahead of us. And I wanted to make sure you arrived here safely.”

“Well, thank you.” Jonathan toasted in Ardeth’s general direction. “What planning is there to do, though? We defeated the bugger, didn’t we? I figured you could all just… retire, now.”

“The implications of a cursed priest and a book that can raise the dead seem to have escaped you, my friend. Hamunaptra remains buried for the moment, but what will stop men with more greed than sense from returning, with more diggers, with bigger machinery? And Imhotep’s curse is not the only one in this desert.”

“Dear lord, it isn’t?”

“What did you think was the reason we have several tribes?”

“I honestly hadn’t thought about it.” Jonathan took another drink. “If you ever see me wander into a cursed tomb with open arms again, do me a favour and warn a chap, will you? I promise I’ll listen.”

“Well, since you promised.”

Jonathan threw him a look. “I do regret losing the book of Amun Ra now. Seems to me like it would make your job a lot easier if you still had it.”

“How so? It was the black book that raised the creature.”

“Yes, but it was the golden book that made him mortal. You could read from it once a day, make a little thing out of it over breakfast, every morning a different speaker. That way, if anyone happened to revive him in between, he’d be mortal again and easy pickings for your friends or anyone else armed and brave he came across.”

“That is… not as stupid as it sounds.”

“Ah, see, I’m not just a good-looking face, no sir,” Jonathan said and Ardeth laughed, shaking his head. He had a nice laugh. And hair. And eyes, which were currently discovering something on the table.

“When you first pointed this at me,” Ardeth said as he picked up the gun that Jonathan must have forgotten on the balcony when he took his nightcap, “I thought it was a toy. It is very small.”

“That _toy_ ,” Jonathan said, somewhat miffed, “is a Remington Derringer and was gifted to me by a dear friend. It’s saved my life on more than one occasion.”

“How so? It only holds two bullets.”

“And the element of surprise. A gun that small is easy to hide and hard to find, as my friend proved when she pulled it out from under a dress that really left very little to the imagination.”

“She sounds like a resourceful person.” Ardeth set the gun back on the table, careful to point the barrel away from them.

“Likely too resourceful, if I’m honest. I should really pay her a visit, last I heard she left the London socialites behind and went off to Australia.”

“Is that what you plan to do next? I assumed you would return home.” Ardeth said.

“To London? It’s not quite as simple as all that, no, we’re not just... part of the stubborn remnants of British occupation. Our mother was Egyptian, did you know that?” Ardeth looked over in surprise. “Ha, yes, not that it’s all that,” Jonathan waved a hand about his face, “noticeable. Really, I look more like our mother than Evy does, if you’re willing to believe it.”

Ardeth looked amused now, one eyebrow quirked and a small smile playing about his lips. “I believe it.”

“Well- thanks.” He covered the unexpected gap in his train of thought with another swallow of his drink. “We grew up here, Evy and I. We have a house, inherited from our father and we’ve lived there, here, more than we ever have in London.” Technically, the house belonged to Jonathan, but it was his in name only. Evy had long since been in charge of caring for it, as she was the only one that lived there full time since the revolution had ended and was indubitably the one more capable of the task.

“I didn’t know that,” Ardeth confessed. 

“Yes, well, our partnership so far hasn’t exactly lent itself to polite chit-chat.” Ardeth laughed quietly. “I imagine Evy has some designs on taking over at the museum before anyone can tell her no, now that the position is- open. Er, sorry.” Jonathan hastily bit his lip, dragging his gaze away from Ardeth’s face and onto his empty glass.

“As Medjai, we accept the possibility of death in order to keep our oath. Though he will be missed, Terrence did not die in vain.”

“Still,” he said, mentally hitting himself for not dropping the topic at his earliest convenience, “he was your friend and I’m sorry he died.”

“Thank you.” Ardeth inclined his head.

“Right,” Jonathan said, feeling entirely too British in the face of all these emotions. “So.” Where were they? “Ah, yes, I have no doubt O’Connell - Rick - will go wherever Evy does.”

“They have grown quite close, yes,” Ardeth said, smiling when Jonathan pulled a face. “You don’t approve?”

“Oh, no, I approve alright, American as he might be. Still, there’s miles between approval and wanting to think about- that.” He groaned. “Do you have any siblings?”

“Not by blood, no, although I think of many of the Medjai as my family. If someone tries to pursue one of us and the rest of the tribe does not approve, they will have a hard time indeed. We once banned a man for not complimenting a meal that was prepared for him by the mother of the woman he was interested in.” Ardeth laughed quietly at the memory. “It is likely different from having a single sister though.”

“There’s nothing that compares to the unique experience of Evelyn Carnahan as your sister, believe you me.”

“I believe she might say the same thing about you as her brother, no?”

“Well,” Jonathan narrowed his eyes at Ardeth, “probably. Doesn’t mean she’s right, though.”

“Of course not.” Ardeth smiled innocently, which should really not be possible. “But what about you? Is there another expedition waiting in your future? I will not be able to warn you off the cursed tombs if you don’t intend to enter any.”

“Oh, no, I think I’ve had quite enough adventure for one lifetime, thank you very much. I was brave exactly once and, well, I vowed never to be so foolish again.” He turned to Ardeth, hoping he might understand without Jonathan having to spell it out for him.

“The war?” Ardeth asked quietly. Jonathan nodded, trying to be nonchalant about the glass slipping through his fingers and sliding halfway across the table. As usual with the topic, he could feel himself becoming quite morose and entirely too honest on top.

“I knew this chap in college, a few years above me. Just before, he joined an expedition to discover the southernmost point on the planet. Ridiculous, really. There’s nothing to be found down there but ice and darkness, and the remote possibility of being able to tell your grandkids that you’d been. And when he got back, they shipped him off to Belgium, and when he got back from _that_ , he wasn’t quite right anymore.”

“Did he find it?”

“Hm?”

“The south pole. Did he find it?”

“He wasn’t even on the team that set out to go looking. And those that were, they all died. He wrote a book about it and it’s- bleak. I don’t want to become bleak, Ardeth.”

“I can assure you, Jonathan,” he said, gently taking Jonathan’s unbandaged hand in his own, “you are very far from bleak.”

“Thank you,” Jonathan said, trying very hard not to stare at their entwined hands on the table. A simple reassurance, certainly. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Ardeth laughed again and, apparently emboldened by the fact that Jonathan hadn’t pulled his hand away yet, stroked his thumb across the back of it. 

“All I really wish for is sleep,” Jonathan said, mouth unbearably dry, “but that hasn’t exactly been working out.” He waved the unoccupied hand behind him, indicating the empty bed and its rumpled sheets.

“You’re experiencing nightmares?” Ardeth asked, not relenting the stroking of his thumb.

“More like the fear of nightmares is preventing me from finding sleep. And when I do, the damn arm keeps waking me up.”

“It still bothers you?” Ardeth let his eyes roam over the patches of bandages peeking out of Jonathan’s half-buttoned shirt.

“It itches, from the inside out. Sometimes it feels like it’s still… in there.” He shuddered.

Ardeth let go of his hand and reached for Jonathan’s other arm, pausing and waiting for Jonathan’s nod before taking the limb in his hands. Carefully, he stroked along the arm and shoulder, lightening his touch when it passed over the bandages. Jonathan closed his eyes, resting his head on the back of the chair.

“Nothing in there that shouldn’t be,” Ardeth said softly, thumbs back on those damn pulse points and pressing gentle circles into them.

“Good to know,” Jonathan mumbled. With his eyes closed, the only warning he received was the shuffle of fabric and a puff of warm breath on his cheek before Ardeth kissed him. Still, it was enough warning for him to respond in kind.

“To bed, then?” Jonathan opened his heavy eyes to Ardeth’s smile.

He nodded. “To bed.”

**Author's Note:**

> The friends that Jonathan makes so very thinly veiled references to are of course The Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher and the much less fictional "Cherry". I have to admit I've never actually read the book, but I can't imagine that something with the title "The Worst Journey in the World" is an especially hilarious read.


End file.
